Three more deaths and 1,432 hospital admissions in 24 hours. In its bulletin on Saturday, Bangladesh’s health directorate reported 214 deaths so far this year, with 71,536 people admitted to hospital and 66,256 discharged, including 1,429 sent home in the latest 24-hour period.
Official records put the country’s cases in the first nine months of the year at close to 100,000. Over the same nine months, West Bengal logged just over 5,000. Singapore, which had a record 35,315 infections in 2020, had only 2,411 by mid-September this year. Malaysia, where cases topped 100,000 in both 2023 and 2024, reported about 44,000 last year.
Bangladesh’s response, by contrast, remains heavily reliant on spraying insecticide. Experts say the difference lies in the method. Countries and cities that have made progress in controlling dengue did so by destroying breeding sites, regularly tracking patients and mosquitoes as well as drawing the public into the effort.
Dengue was first detected in Bangladesh in the 1960s. It surfaced as an epidemic around 2000, then spent two decades largely confined to the capital. In 2019, the mosquito-borne disease spread nationwide. The COVID years did not slow it. And since 2023, it has grown more severe and more widely dispersed.
India’s experience is older. Dengue was first identified there in the 1940s, and an outbreak in Kolkata in 1963 killed about 200 people. Annual flare-ups followed for decades, until about 2010, when the Kolkata Municipal Corporation changed it approach.
Experts say the corporation recognised that conventional fogging could not control Aedes mosquitoes effectively, and the emphasis moved to eliminating the places where the mosquito breeds.
Surveillance now runs year-round to keep water from standing anywhere, supported by drones and a large field workforce. Information is regularly collected from hospitals, nursing homes and laboratories on which tests are run and which viruses are found. When a case is confirmed, the area is pinpointed, nearby homes and likely breeding sites are searched, and larvae are destroyed. Experts say that combination of surveillance and source control has helped bring major dengue outbreaks largely under control.
Urban planner Dr Adil Mohammed Khan believes Dhaka could learn from it. “Kolkata High Court banned fogging in 2019,” he told Bonik Barta. “In its place they improved drainage, gathered patient data and followed it up scientifically, involving residents. We, by contrast, remain keener on buying insecticide. Whether or not the mosquitoes die, these purchases leave room for corruption.”
“If the government were genuinely serious, an integrated plan and management could bring the outbreak down. But no government has wanted to touch the root of the problem; they have shown more appetite for buying insecticide. So the purchases happen, and dengue is not controlled,” Khan added.
Singapore provides another success story. After record 35,315 cases in 2020 and 32,173 in 2022, infections were down to about 4,000 last year and 2,411 by mid-September this year. Its authorities inspect homes, construction sites and other potential breeding grounds, destroy larvae in standing water and impose fines where needed. They monitor mosquito and patient numbers, detect outbreaks early and run public-awareness campaigns that pull in local residents.
The country has also begun releasing male Aedes mosquitoes carrying a particular bacterium; authorities claim the risk of infection in areas covered by the programme has fallen by more than 70 percent.
The crucial part is that Singapore has not leaned on any single tool. For nearly six decades, it has combined source destruction, surveillance, enforcement, community involvement and new technology, enough to keep outbreaks contained even without eradicating the disease.
Malaysia faces urbanisation pressures similar to Dhaka’s, and until recently its dengue situation was precarious: about 64,000 cases in 2022, then more than 100,000 in each of the next two years. Cases fell to about 44,000 in 2025, though nearly 58,000 people had been infected by August 2026 and 55 had died.
Malaysia’s approach mixes routine breeding-site detection with surveillance of patients and mosquitoes, targeted insecticide use and special operations in affected areas. Rapid diagnosis and treatment form part of the national plan.
The public is drawn in too: residents help clear standing water, eliminate breeding grounds and take part in clean-up drives. Volunteers and organisations also joined a nationwide campaign in 2023.
Where conditions favour breeding, Malaysia’s authorities can take legal action. Dengue control is treated not as the health ministry’s burden alone but as a shared system of local government, agencies and residents.
Malaysia has also expanded the release of Wolbachia-carrying Aedes mosquitoes, covering 28 high-risk areas by 2022. Where the programme has run for at least two years, cases have fallen by between 33 and 100 percent.
Researchers see a more fundamental flaw in how Dhaka’s two city corporations handle mosquitoes. They say the most effective time to control mosquitoes is when their density is low. But in Dhaka, mobile courts and special drives tend to be stepped up only after the nuisance has grown. The effect is temporary with no major long-term results.
Entomologist Kabirul Bashar told Bonik Barta that the first thing an integrated approach requires is to “keep the surrounding environment clean”.
He added: “Action should be based on data, where mosquito density is highest, which mosquito species is more prevalent, and what chemical should be used and at what dose. Biological methods, such as releasing fish and ducks into water bodies, can be used to head off excessive breeding. Chemical insecticides should also be applied as needed and public awareness raised. It is by following that kind of integrated approach that Kolkata and other cities have got relatively good results.”
Bashar cautions against reading Bangladesh’s figures alongside its neighbours’. “Elsewhere you get figures close to the real number of dengue patients,” he said. “In Bangladesh, we only know about patients admitted to a fixed set of hospitals. The number of infected is much higher in reality. So a direct comparison with other countries does not give a true picture. If Malaysia says it has 50,000 patients, that is close to the real figure. If Bangladesh reports 50,000, the true number may be two or three times that. We are still not getting the real picture.”
Dr Mahbubul Hasan Siddiqee, a professor of microbiology at BRAC University, argues that Bangladesh’s environmental conditions limit how far the Kolkata or Singapore models can simply be transplanted.
He told Bonik Barta: “Dhaka and other parts of the country have canals, beels, rivers and streams. And because Bangladesh is rain-prone, dengue control here is comparatively more complex. So it isn’t right to think that copying the Kolkata model or another city’s model will produce the same results.”
Dr Siddiqee added that the public has a big role to play too alongside government agencies. “Public engagement was one reason for Kolkata’s success. That level of participation in Dhaka isn’t yet visible. People aren’t aware enough either. Unless every person takes steps to prevent dengue in their own surroundings, the government and its mosquito workers can’t control the problem alone.”
Officials at the city corporations insist their methods are already grounded in science. Md Abdus Salam, administrator of Dhaka South City Corporation, said: “We apply fogging and larvicide for mosquito control. We also run various programmes to raise public awareness. Even so, a fine is imposed if Aedes larvae are found in a home or establishment. Our actions are determined on the advice of an expert committee.”
The experts’ broader point is that Bangladesh need not copy another city’s dengue strategy wholesale. It can adapt the principles that underpin them: detecting the conditions that allow outbreaks to grow, attacking breeding sites before mosquito numbers surge and making prevention a year-round task rather than a seasonal campaign. The technology already exists. So do the methods. What remains is to turn them into a system that starts controlling dengue before the hospitals begin to fill.